Compare and contrast. In a US court, Judge Jeffrey Spinner wrote off a mortgage debt of £300,000 owed by a couple who had fallen behind on their payments because of their lender's behaviour, which he said was "harsh, repugnant, shocking and repulsive… [the bank] must be appropriately sanctioned so as to deter it from imposing further mortifying abuse". In a UK court, almost a million people hoping for a refund of overdraft charges under an action brought by the Office of Fair Trading had their claims struck out.

The term "bank charges" – which make the high-street players around £2.6bn a year – is a euphemism: they are fines bearing no obvious relationship to the costs involved. Even more offensive are the hefty "fees" for taking out mortgages and other products: these are fines on customers for giving the bank their business.

In the interminable queue at my branch again last week, I overheard a fellow-sufferer wondering how the banks dare charge customers so much for going into the red, when they have taken a multibillion pound unauthorised overdraft from us. If only we had a Judge Spinner in our supreme court.